Mob week: Why we can't get enough of the gangster life

By Ann O'Neill, CNN

Updated 12:12 PM ET, Sat June 22, 2013

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Our fascination with the mob – We are fascinated with mobsters and those affected by them, both in real life and on screen. "There's the reality of organized crime that nobody is in love with, and there's the mythologized version that everyone is in love with," said Ron Kuby, a lawyer who defended the late John Gotti. The cast of HBO's "The Sopranos," from left, Tony Sirico, Steve Van Zandt, James Gandolfini, Michael Imperioli and Vincent Pastore. Gandolfini died on June 19 from a heart attack at age 51.

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Our fascination with the mob – James "Whitey" Bulger, the reputed former head of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, was convicted on Monday, August 12, of racketeering and 11 counts of murder.

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Our fascination with the mob – Jimmy Hoffa was last seen outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in suburban Detroit in 1975. He'd gone there to meet with reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters boss, to settle a beef. There have been more than a dozen digs for Hoffa's remains since he vanished, most recently in a field near Detroit. Once again, authorities came up empty-handed.

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Our fascination with the mob – New York Mafia chief John Gotti was known as the "Dapper Don" for his expensive suits and "Teflon Don" due to government charges failing to stick in three trials. He was later convicted of murder and racketeering. He died of cancer at age 61 in 2002 while serving a life sentence.

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Our fascination with the mob – Marlon Brando plays the supreme don in "The Godfather" (1972), directed by Frances Ford Coppola and based on Mario Puzo's best-selling novel. Puzo stitched together slices of reality, weaving a tale so colorful that the FBI's wiretaps later captured real mobsters quoting from the book and subsequent movie.

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Our fascination with the mob – Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, at center with two unidentified men, established crime syndicate-controlled gambling in Las Vegas.

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Our fascination with the mob – From left, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino and Joe Pesci in the mob drama "Goodfellas" (1990).

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Our fascination with the mob – In "Married to the Mob" (1988), Dean Stockwell plays a mob boss who courts Michelle Pfeiffer's character, who is trying to escape the Mafia life after her husband is killed.

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Our fascination with the mob – Vinny "The Chin" Gigante, shown here in 1997 while on trial in New York. Before his conviction for murder conspiracy and labor racketeering, Gigante was famous for mumbling to himself while walking the streets of Manhattan in a bathrobe. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges for false claims of mental illness.

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Our fascination with the mob – Lorraine Bracco plays Tony Soprano's psychiatrist in "The Sopranos." She made a career out of mob dramas, also playing Henry Hill's wife in "Goodfellas."

Story highlights

Part of appeal, lawyer says: Outlaws are scary, but not as scary as terrorists

"They're not going to hurt you if you mind your manners," says John Gotti's lawyer, Ron Kuby

Suddenly, it was mob week in the news.

Once again, the FBI was digging up a field, looking for the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Whitey Bulger's enforcer was on the stand in Boston, admitting to 20 murders and bristling at being called a mass murderer. And Tony Soprano was dead -- not whacked by an underworld rival, but done in at age 51 by his own heart.

Soprano, the only Italian-American in the bunch, wasn't even real. He was a fictional character played by actor James Gandolfini in HBO's acclaimed series "The Sopranos." It was Gandolfini who died, while on vacation in Italy, six years after the show that made his character a cultural icon went off the air.

Hoffa, a powerful union boss back in a time when unions mattered, was born in coal country and was merely connected (reputedly) to the Detroit mob. Bulger, who is Irish, manipulated the FBI for years by ratting out his Italian mob rivals before going on the lam to sunny California.

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"There's the reality of organized crime that nobody is in love with, and there's the mythologized version that everyone is in love with," said Ron Kuby, a lawyer who defended the late John Gotti, New York's so-called Teflon don. "We like these outlaws because their lives appear to be so much more genuine than ours, so outside the conventions of society."

Here's the myth: Mobsters live by their own, strict moral code. "Family is sacred, they never harm a woman, they never harm a child, the only people they hurt have voluntarily engaged in 'the life'," Kuby said.

And then you pull back the curtain and "the reality is ugly and brutal," he added. "The strict moral code also involves cheating on their wives and executing their gay relatives."

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini 8 photos

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini8 photos

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – When the news broke on Wednesday that "The Sopranos" star James Gandolfini died at 51, tributes poured in around the world, including CNN iReport. "So long, paisan" was how Orlando, Florida, resident Pat Tantalo chose to say goodbye to the friend he met on the set of the 2006 film "Lonely Hearts." "When Jimmy arrived, he was bigger than life. He shook everyone's hands and made sure he learned everyone's name. We were just finishing a production meeting and we introduced ourselves. We instantly connected. He planted his huge mitts on my shoulders and called me a little bull."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Randy Robinson worked on the set of "Lonely Hearts" as well. "When I first met him it took a little time for him to warm up to you, but after he did, he was like a big funny bear. He was very tired on many occasions on set. There was this old couch where he would lay down for a much-needed nap. He snored louder than a bear could growl. They actually had to wake him because the microphones would pick it up."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini8 photos

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Julio Ortiz-Teissonniere met Gandolfini outside of his Broadway show, "God of Carnage," in 2009."I thought how cool it was when he spoke to a former classmate of his that was standing next to me waiting to get his autograph. He remembered her and he even asked about another classmate."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Erin Farley went to several locations in North Caldwell, New Jersey, the morning after Gandolfini died, including the Holsten's Ice Cream Parlor, site of the famous final scene of the series. "Being from New Jersey, Tony Soprano was always a name I heard growing up. And yesterday when he passed away, my state was so affected and I wanted to find out why."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Farley pointed out that, as of Wednesday night, "Ice cream eaters can sit anywhere but the booth that Tony Soprano sat in during the very last episode. A reserved sign sits on the table alongside a newspaper dedicated to Gandolfini."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini8 photos

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Neigbors and fans flocked to the home which was used as the home of the Sopranos to pay their respects. "The neighbors remember him as a friendly guy who would just come up and hug you. Though he played a criminal on television, they say he was one of the nicest men and always waved hello."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini8 photos

'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Farley saw a candle and a bag of pasta left in front of the driveway, in "Tony's" memory. "It was really interesting to listen to people call him Tony and not James. Everyone called him Tony, that's just who he is. He was an icon for New Jersey and it shows."

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'So long, paisan:' Fans mourn Gandolfini – Art Frewin named his Wellin, Ontario, bar the "Bada Bing Roadhouse," inspired by "The Sopranos," and paid tribute on the sign outside his establishment when he heard the news. "I was sorry to see Tony ... James pass away. We'll always know him as Tony, you know. I thought he was a brilliant actor who played a brilliant part. I was very taken aback. 51 is way too young."

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EXPAND GALLERY

Part of the appeal is outlaws are dangerous and a little scary -- but not too scary. Certainly not al Qaeda scary, he added. "They're not going to hurt you if you mind your manners."

And then there are the colorful nicknames, which are faithfully listed on any indictment. Consider these gems from the cover page of a racketeering indictment out of New York two years ago: Mousey, Tony Bagels, Hootie, Meatball, Vinny Carwash, Junior Lollipops and Baby Fat Larry (BFL for short.)

Jerry Capeci covered New York's five Mafia families and chronicled Gotti's rise and fall for the New York Daily News. He now runs a website called Gang Land News. He says we're fascinated by criminals and have been since the shoot 'em-up days of the Old West. Mobsters are the modern-day varmints and cattle rustlers.

"John Gotti was the lighting rod that turned New York newspaper readers and TV viewers onto the Mafia in the '80s," he said.

Capeci, a native New Yorker and Italian-American, says he treated the mob like any other beat. He got to know the agents, the cops, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, the victims, even the mobsters themselves. It was a lot like covering schools or city hall, he said, even if the characters were more colorful -- and more ruthless.

After all, not many school principals stash guns and piles of money behind walls or stuff bodies into car trunks.

America was in search of new, epic heroes after the West was won, agreed Robert Thompson, an expert on media and popular culture who teaches at Syracuse University.

Prohibition brought bootleggers and crime bosses like Al Capone. A few decades later, gambling gave us Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. The 1950s saw the Kefauver hearings, which exposed the existence of the Italian Mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra.

By the 1960s, the time was ripe for Mario Puzo and "The Godfather." Puzo stitched together slices of reality, weaving a tale so colorful that the FBI's wiretaps later captured real mobsters quoting from the book and subsequent movie. Even the characters on "The Sopranos" recited from "The Godfather."

The book, depicting the rise of the fictional Corleone crime family, was published in 1969 and became an instant best-seller. The movie, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton and James Caan, followed in 1972 and was even more popular than the book, Thompson said. To this day, it tops many critics' lists as the best movie ever. "The Godfather II" arrived in theaters in 1974 and it, too, was "spectacular," almost as good as the original, Thompson said.

A year later, Hoffa disappeared. The "Godfather" saga had whetted appetites for tales of the underworld. The Hoffa story was huge.

Hoffa was last seen outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in suburban Detroit on July 30, 1975. He'd gone there to meet with reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters boss, to settle a beef. They never showed. Hoffa, 62, made a phone call and just vanished.

In Hoffa's case, the fascination is all about the mystery. There have been more than a dozen digs for his remains over the years, and plenty of speculation about what happened to him. Maybe he was entombed in concrete under the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Maybe he was buried on a Michigan horse farm, or fed to the alligators in Florida. Maybe he ran off to South America with a stripper.

The most recent excavation came in response to a tip from an aging Giacalone associate. Tony Zerilli, 85, told agents that Hoffa had been beaten with a shovel and buried alive beneath the concrete slab of a barn, long gone.

The tip didn't pan out, but the search did attract a bystander who brought back memories of a famous scene from "The Godfather." A man calling himself "Mr. Ed" showed up at the dig site wearing a horse's head mask and carrying a shovel, apparently to protest the expense of the continuing search for Hoffa's body.

Ten years after Hoffa vanished, Gotti took control of the Gambino crime family and held the city of New York and its tabloids in his sway for nearly a decade. He was a natty dresser and loved playing to the television cameras as he was acquitted three times at high-profile trials. He became known as the Teflon don and it infuriated the feds. The FBI finally flipped underboss Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano as a star witness against Gotti, and The Bull testified in 1992 about five gangland executions. Gotti received a life sentence, plus fines and a $50 "surcharge."

Gotti's attorney, Kuby, said he will never forget what Gotti said as he took off his expensive silk tie back in the holding cell: "Wow, that $50 surcharge. They really know how to hurt a guy."

Gotti died in prison in 2002 after a battle with throat cancer. To the end, he remained "a stand-up guy" -- high praise in the mob world where "rats" like Gravano are reviled.

The feds turned their attention to Gotti's son, "Junior," who, according to newspaperman Capeci, "was a household figure for several years." The feds tried four times in five years to convict him of mob-related charges but failed. Gotti claimed he was "retired" from the mob, and the feds finally threw in the towel in January 2010, saying in court papers: "In light of all the circumstances, the government has decided not to proceed with the prosecution against John A. Gotti."

"He was and he's still in the news," Capeci said. "He has commissioned a movie about him and his father."

There have been other mob movies over the years. "Goodfellas," starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, told the story of the late mob informant Henry Hill. Actress Lorraine Bracco made a career out of mob dramas, playing Henry Hill's wife in "Goodfellas" and Tony Soprano's shrink in "The Sopranos."

Jimmy Hoffa, Whitey Bulger and Tony Soprano are old world characters whose sagas long ago took on lives of their own. They were bad guys, perhaps, but they weren't all bad. They lived by their own code. It's just business. Fuhgeddaboudit.

While Hoffa has become more famous for being gone than for anything he did while he was here, Bulger was embraced for a while as a sort of Robin Hood in Boston's Southie neighborhood. The myth was spun, it later turned out, by his corrupt FBI handler.

As his trial began in Boston, Bulger's attorney admitted he was many bad things -- a bookie, a loan shark, a thug -- but denied that he'd ever been an FBI informant or that he killed two women who are among his 19 named victims. Such things went against the code.

For Bulger, 1999 was the beginning of the end. That's when a federal grand jury handed up the indictment he's now being tried for. "The Sopranos" also began that year on HBO, and Tony Soprano was a man for his time.

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He wasn't real, but he was realistic as a Jersey guy in "waste management" who had panic attacks and bouts of depression and loved his kids.

" 'The Sopranos' is all about a guy at the turn of the century who wants to be Don Corleone, but he's got this horrible feeling that everybody perceives him as Homer Simpson," pop culture expert Thompson said.

"He's beating up this guy and he's talking about how 'I heard you didn't respect me.' He wants to be the classic mobster, but he's got these constant domestic issues with his mother, with his wife, with his shrink. He's leading this schlub life. That's what that show was all about: It updated the American urban myth."

He cited a favorite Tony Soprano quote: "It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over."

Sometimes it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. It turns out that Tony Soprano wasn't the only good fella to visit a shrink because of the stress in his life. Bulger has spent some time on the couch, too.

The feds who were looking for Hoffa might have come up empty-handed. But this week in Queens, other FBI agents hit pay dirt in somebody's basement, Capeci reports. They unearthed human remains.

"Officials believe the victim was killed by a Bonanno family gangster as a favor to Jimmy 'The Gent' Burke, the mastermind of a daring $6 million airlines heist who died in prison in 1996," he wrote on Gang Land.

Capeci also had a tip for members of the Lucchese family, now that budget cuts have thinned the ranks of the FBI mob watchers some 60% since 2008: "Memo to Big Frank, Bowat and Stevie Wonder: Relax: That woman you saw the other day who looked out of place probably wasn't an FBI agent. Neither was the guy who eyeballed you near your house. And don't worry about that suspicious-looking car that pulled up alongside you last week -- or fret about using your cell phone, for that matter. The FBI now has only three agents assigned to cover the entire Lucchese crime family."

You can't make this stuff up. There is no beginning or end to these larger-than-life stories, only lots and lots of middle. So, people keep coming back for more.

"What can I say? The beat goes on," Capeci said.

This concept certainly wasn't lost on the producers of "The Sopranos." Remember the Journey song playing on the jukebox as Tony and his family (with a small "f") gathered at a diner in the finale? Remember the lyrics of "Don't Stop Believin' "?